Niebuhr, Reinhold - Interpretation of Christian Ethics (philosophy, theology) (Christian Library).pdf

Interpretation of Christian Ethics

by Reinhold Niebuhr











Interpretation of Christian Ethics was published in 1935 by Harper & Brothers. This material prepared for
Religion Online by Harry and Grace Adams.

PDF by ANGEL (realnost-******@)
Chapter I: An Independent Christian Ethic
A viable Protestant Christian ethic must establish an independence from both more orthodox
churches that are locked in dogmatisms of the past and liberal churches that are overidentified
with the secular culture of modernism, while maintaining the myths of the transcendent in
tension with the ideal of love in human history.
Chapter II: The Ethic of Jesus
The ethic of mands an all-embracing love because God’s love is like that. It sets
itself against all self-regarding impulses, including physical survival, love of possessions,
pride, prudential morality, and even family loyalty. Such absolutism and perfectionism leads
to the eschatology of an "impossible possibility" whereby God’s kingdom is ing
but never here.
Chapter III: The Christian Conception of Sin
Prophetic Christianity has been able to hold in paradoxical juxtaposition Jesus’ unqualified
mandment and the fact of sin and evil by reliance on the myth of the Fall, which
focuses on the root of man’s sin as his pretensions of being God.
Chapter IV: The Relevance of an Impossible Ethical Ideal
In light of prophetic religion’s law of love being an impossible possibility for finite humans,
the relativity of all moral ideals cannot absolve us of the necessity of choosing between
relative values by knowing what is impossible and what is possible in the moral demands
under which we all stand.
Chapter V: The Law of Love in Politics and Economics
The field of politics and economics is particularly strategic testing-ground for the adequacy
and relevance of a religio-moral world view, and focuses on the problem of justice as a
balance between the id